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Nigeria RELIGION
Several religions coexisted in Nigeria, helping to
accentuate
regional and ethnic distinctions. All religions
represented in
Nigeria were practiced in every major city in 1990. But
Islam
dominated in the north, Protestantism and local syncretic
Christianity were most in evidence in Yoruba areas, and
Catholicism predominated in the Igbo and closely related
areas.
The 1963 census indicated that 47 percent of Nigerians
were
Muslim, 35 percent Christian, and 18 percent members of
local
indigenous congregations. If accurate, this indicated a
sharp
increase in the number of Christians (up 13 percent); a
slight
decline among those professing indigenous beliefs,
compared with
20 percent in 1953; and only a modest (4 percent) rise of
Muslims. This surge was partly a result of the recognized
value
of education provided by the missions, especially in the
previously non-Christian middle belt. It also resulted
from 1963
census irregularities that artificially increased the
proportion
of southern Christians to northern Muslims. Since then two
more
forces have been operating. There has been the growth of
the
Aladura Church, an Africanized Christian sect that was
especially
strong in the Yoruba areas, and of evangelical churches in
general, spilling over into adjacent and southern areas of
the
middle belt. At the same time, Islam was spreading
southward into
the northern reaches of the middle belt, especially among
the
upwardly mobile, who saw it as a necessary attribute for
full
acceptance in northern business and political circles. In
general, however, the country should be seen as having a
predominantly Muslim north and a non-Muslim, primarily
Christian
south, with each as a minority faith in the other's
region; the
middle belt was more heterogeneous.
Data as of June 1991
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